Maximise Pinterest impact with only a few followers ...

Pinterest is my biggest source of traffic and delivers 10x more hits than other social networks.

But I'll let you into a little secret - I'm new on Pinterest and I don't have 1000s of followers.

How can that be?

Surely you have to build friends/likes/followers before social networks drive traffic?

Well with Pinterest no. Because if your post is seen and pinned by someone with tens of thousands of followers, it can easily get 100s if not 1000s of page views.


The principle holds true for Twitter and Facebook, but Pinterest does it on a different scale. Top pinners pin far more each day than they post to Twitter or Facebook.  And that massively increases your chance of being pinned and then re-pinned and re-pinned and re-pinned.

So how do you get yourself in front of top pinners? This is what works for me ...

1. Select a great photo

• Select a simple, standout picture for your post - nothing dark or fiddly
• Edit photo in Pic Monkey - whack up the brightness and the contrast
• Crop the photo to a square (best for linky parties) and resize to ~540 pixels

2. Add a stand out title to the picture 

• Craft a title that demands attention
• Add the title to your picture in Pic Monkey
• My link on the right illustrates how important this is - it was a dull old post with only 100 page views.  I tweaked it, gave it a new photo and a title that made people believe they needed to read the post ... it is now my top performer of all time

3. Share your post on linky parties

• This is your way to get your post in front of key Pinterest influencers
• If you're new to linky parties check out these 10 great tips for linky party success
• You can find over 100 different mommy parties to chose from in this linky party list
• When choosing parties check how many Pinterest followers the party host(s) has
• A great picture and title will generate plenty of new traffic from the linky party itself but you will really see traffic spike if the party host features and pins you

4. Put a pin button on your post 

Great post from the Blog Maven

• Now you want all that new traffic to re-pin your post
• Make it easy and add a pin button to your post
• Use the Pinterest wizard to add to a single post
• Or use this tutorial to add the button to all your posts

5. Put your best posts with pin buttons on side bar

• If you've got a new reader and they've pinned your post, they're in the mood for more cool stuff that you might have but don't want to go rooting about to find it
• Make it easy for them to pin more posts by adding links with pin buttons to your side bar
• The Blog Maven has a great post on how to do this

6. Make it easy for people to follow you on Pinterest

• Most people on Pinterest follow boards rather than pinners
• Make it easy for new readers to find boards they'll love with the Pinterest board widget
• Displayed at the end of the post like my social media board below all the reader has to do is click on the see on Pinterest button and follow it ...

I owe an enormous debt of gratitude to Cerys Parker at Rainy Day Mum who first showed me the power of Pinterest when she pinned one of my posts, so as a small thank you I am featuring her brilliant Tuesday Tots linky party this week in my Linky parties I love series.